Vortex

by Chris Ryan

  'One.'

  He desperately tried to think what to do.

  'Two.'

  He could try and spin Lucian round so they were both standing in front of Annie.

  'Three.'

  But he couldn't risk a sudden movement. These guys weren't messing around.

  'Four.'

  Think, Ben. Think.

  'F—'

  'All right!' he shouted. 'All right, I'm putting it down.' He closed his eyes, lowered his arm then turned round. The soldier who had caught them was standing about ten metres away. He had an assault rifle aimed directly at Annie's back, and his finger was poised over the trigger in readiness. His face was filled with undisguised fury, and Ben realized instantly that this was the same guy they had locked in their cell.

  'Put the gun down on the floor in front of you,' the soldier growled.

  Ben did as he was told.

  'Now kick it in my direction.'

  He tapped the gun with his shoe and it slid a little way along the ground. The soldier approached, the butt of the gun still firmly dug into his shoulder as he aimed alternately at Annie and then Ben. Within seconds he was right up close to them. Lucian pushed past Ben and stood behind the soldier, a satisfied smirk on his face. 'About time for us to stop the heroics, wouldn't you say?'

  The soldier grinned slightly at Lucian's comment, but he kept the rifle trained on Ben and Annie.

  Lucian addressed the soldier. 'The exit, now. I'll go up front and you follow behind. There's a truck outside, and we haven't got much time. We need to be at the training ground before sunrise.' He turned back to the two cousins and gave them an unpleasant look. 'Playtime's over, kids,' he told them, before returning his gaze to his associate.

  'If they try to run away,' he said, 'shoot them.'

  Chapter Seventeen

  At the exit, two soldiers stood guard. They took in what was happening in a single glance, and at a nod from Lucian one of them opened the doors. Beyond the doors was an old set of stone steps leading upwards. Ben and Annie followed Lucian up, hotly aware that they still had a gun pointed at them from behind.

  Outside it was still dark, and as Lucian had predicted there was a truck waiting. Ben and Annie were hustled into the back seat, while the soldier took the wheel and Lucian sat in the passenger seat, twisting his body round so that he could point the gun at them.

  They drove in silence. Ben dug his fingernails nervously into his palms, desperately trying to think of a way out of this, but he couldn't think straight with Lucian pointing a gun straight at him. The truck rumbled and juddered around the edge of a thick forest and so, more as a means of keeping calm than anything else, he concentrated on remembering the route they were taking. If they managed to escape – and it was a very big if – he knew they would have to return to the underground bunker and do something about Vortex.

  Vortex. The very thought of it made him shiver. Joseph's description of what it could achieve rang in his head, and every time he closed his eyes he saw the horrifying image of patients lying in hospital beds, weak and wasting away, with anxious doctors by their side unable to do anything to help. He saw aeroplanes falling from the sky and crashing into populated buildings. He saw the fear in people's eyes as they watched bodies burn and die.

  Could Joseph be right? Could this weapon be as disastrous as he said?

  And then he remembered the look in Lucian's eyes when he boasted about the money he was being paid. Why would anyone give him millions of pounds to develop this weapon if it wasn't going to be horribly effective? Why would it be so top secret?

  'It will kill thousands of people, you know,' he heard himself saying quietly.

  Lucian didn't reply.

  'Their blood will be on your hands. You do realize that, don't you?'

  The old man snorted scornfully. 'I'm a lot older than you,' he said. 'I understand things you don't.'

  Ben looked at him scornfully. 'I bet there aren't many old men who would think that killing your own brother is a good thing to do.'

  'Forgive me,' Lucian replied waspishly, 'but there aren't many old men who have my intellect. And if you think I'm going to let my lunatic brother – or you two, for that matter – get in the way of my creation, I'm afraid you are sadly mistaken.' His eyes flicked briefly out of the window. 'RAF Spadeadam,' he said almost thoughtfully. 'They have a motto. Si vis pacem, para bellum. Normally I don't find that military types have much to say of any interest, but in this instance, I have to make a grudging exception. I take it you do not understand what it means.'

  Ben stared flatly at him, unwilling to admit that he was right. But just as the old man started to open his mouth again, Annie spoke.

  'If you wish for peace,' she said clearly, 'prepare for war.'

  Lucian looked at her in surprise. 'Very good,' he murmured.

  'The thing is,' Annie replied with a confidence that surprised Ben, given their situation, 'that you're the one who's got it wrong. You're the one who doesn't understand it.'

  'I hardly think so.'

  'Of course you don't. Because you're blinded by your arrogance and your belief in your so-called intelligence.'

  'Shut up,' Lucian replied.

  'Or what?' Annie raged. 'You're going to shoot me? I hardly think so, if you're going to all this trouble to cover your tracks. So you might as well listen to me. Preparing for war is one thing; developing weapons that will harm innocent people – even children – is another. And if you reckon that giving Vortex to oppressive regimes is a sure-fire way to stop a nuclear war, then you're even more misguided than I thought. Our armies and our governments do a pretty good job of that without any unasked-for help from you. You think you're cleverer than everyone else, but you're not. You're arrogant and greedy, and even we can see that.'

  By the time she had finished her tirade, Annie was almost breathless. Ben studied Lucian's face intently, fearfully looking for signs that his cousin might have pushed him over the edge. But there were none. He remained stony-faced, as if he hadn't even heard her accusations.

  'Drive quicker,' he said blandly to the soldier next to him. 'We haven't got much time.'

  The vehicle started to speed up, and as it did so, Ben became aware of the sickness of anticipation that was churning in his stomach.

  It could have been five minutes later or it could have been an hour – time suddenly seemed to have little meaning – when the truck started to slow down. Ben looked through the window and peered out into the darkness. He thought he could see huts in the distance, much like the ones that had been on the practice range the previous day, but as he squinted his eyes he could see that this was a much larger range. As the truck came to a halt, Lucian told them to get out; Ben and Annie did as they were told, and were instructed to walk across the field in amongst the huts and the rubble. There were other things there too: the blown-out carcasses of old cars, a tank like the one they had seen before. Ben couldn't concentrate on them too much, though – he was too acutely aware of the guns being pointed at them as Lucian and the soldier walked behind.

  As they walked, the darkness oozed into the cold grey of dawn, and as if from nowhere Ben became aware of the dawn chorus filling the air with its deafening throng. When he had heard that sound only a couple of days before, it had filled him with excitement and wonder; now, though, it seemed ominous, as though it were foretelling something. Something bad.

  Eventually they approached a hut in the middle of the practice range. It looked as though it had been newly built, and was constructed of rough, untreated timber – clearly this was not a structure that anyone expected to be there for a long time. On the door was a heavy metal padlock. 'You have the key?' Lucian asked the soldier.

  He didn't reply; he simply stepped up to the hut, laid his rifle against the side and unlocked the padlock. 'Get in,' he growled.

  Nervously, Ben and Annie walked through the door. It was dark inside, but by the weak light that spilled in, Ben could see Joseph there. He was sitting in the co
rner, trembling, his hair dishevelled and his face bruised. He didn't seem to register their arrival. Annie rushed towards him and touched her hand lightly to his beaten face; even then it was as if they weren't there.

  Lucian spoke from the doorway. 'You seem to know something about the RAF, my girl,' he commented, 'so perhaps you would like some idea of what is about to happen. In about twenty minutes there will be a flyover by an A Ten Tankbuster aircraft. You've heard of the Tankbuster, I take it?'

  'Yeah,' Annie stated. 'I've heard of it.'

  'Good. They will be firing depleted uranium shells at around seventy rounds per second. As you probably know, such weapons can be' – he stopped, as though he were choosing his words carefully – 'reasonably destructive.' He looked over at Joseph, narrowing his eyes slightly, and then stepped backwards. 'Lock them in,' he told the soldier.

  The door closed in front of him, and in the darkness they could hear the unmistakable sound of a key in the lock; moments later, the engine of the truck started up, and the vehicle drove away.

  It was Ben who spoke first. 'Depleted uranium shells?' he asked. 'What are they?'

  'You don't want to know.'

  'Actually, I do.'

  Annie sighed impatiently. 'Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the nuclear power industry. It's very dense, which makes it an effective material for ammunition.'

  'Right,' Ben replied, his voice a bit tight. 'And, er, seventy rounds per second. That's quite a lot, isn't it?'

  'Yes, Ben. It's quite a lot. If we get hit by those things, chances are they won't even find our bodies.'

  Ben took a deep, shaky breath; it was all he could do to stop his limbs from trembling. 'Then we'd better think of a way to get out of here. And fast.'

  'I've already tried.' Joseph's voice came weakly from the corner of the hut. 'There's no way out. We're locked in.'

  Surprised by the fact that he had suddenly spoken, Ben and Annie spun round to look at him. 'We can't give up now,' Ben stated. 'There must be a way out.' He approached the door and banged against it. It shuddered slightly in its frame. 'It's a cheaply built hut,' he said. He remembered how easily Annie had knocked down the posts on the perimeter fence. 'What do you think?' he asked her. 'Can we break through this wood?'

  Annie joined him and she too banged on the door. Once more it rattled. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Maybe if we can pound it enough, but we might not have enough time.'

  Ben shrugged. 'Got any better ideas?'

  'Not really, no.'

  'Then let's do it,' he said urgently. 'Come on, we need to work fast.'

  They started to kick against the door, doing their best to aim at the same spot about halfway up each time. Annie's kicks seemed a lot more effective than Ben's – her tae kwon do training allowed her to put the full force of her body into it. For several minutes, they pounded away, their noisy kicks echoing regularly around the hut. The door seemed to rattle increasingly, but after several minutes of solid work, they did not seem to be any closer to breaking it down.

  'This is useless,' Ben muttered angrily, wiping sweat from his brow. 'We've got to try harder. Those planes will be here any—'

  And as he spoke, he heard them.

  The three of them exchanged a nervous look. They all recognized the distant drone, of course. It was the sound of approaching aircraft, and it was getting louder. Without speaking, Ben and Annie resumed their desperate attempt to break the door down: the sound of the planes in the distance made them redouble their efforts.

  It grew louder. And louder.

  When the first round of shells fell, their reverberations knocked them both off their feet – for a minute, Ben thought it had been a direct hit, but when he realized that they were still in one piece, he pushed himself painfully to his feet to start kicking at the door again.

  Annie, however, had beaten him to it. She was standing a couple of metres from the door, a look of intense concentration on her face as she raised her arms in a way that immediately reminded Ben of how she had looked when he had walked into her bedroom only a few days ago.

  'Stand back,' she said under her breath.

  A Tankbuster screamed overhead.

  'This is our last chance, Annie,' Ben whispered. 'Make it a good one.'

  'I'll do my best.' Another bomb blasted nearby.

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and launched herself at the door. With an enormous crack, the wood splintered down the middle.

  Ben's eyes widened, and without waiting for any instruction from Annie he started kicking down the splintered wood. It fell away from the door with surprising ease, and within seconds there was a gap through which they could all squeeze.

  The two of them looked back at Joseph. He was staring around the hut, as though listening for something he couldn't hear, and he hadn't even seemed to notice that they had broken their way out, so they ran back to him and with all their strength pulled him to his feet, then dragged him towards the door and pushed him through the hole.

  And for a split second they stood perfectly still, taking in the scenes of devastation around them.

  It was like a war zone. The noise was deafening; clouds of thick dust surrounded them; planes scorched overhead, firing the depleted uranium shells in what seemed like a completely random way. As soon as they hit the earth they exploded into massive craters, or destroyed huts, blasting them into piles of rubble. Like rabbits in headlights, the three of them stood still, agog at the scenes of destruction. There were twice as many planes as last time, twice as many bombs – and there was nowhere to run and hide. They were in the middle of a huge area of grassland, and the forest they had skirted around was a long way distant.

  'What are we going to do?' Annie screamed.

  'I don't know!' shouted Ben. He looked desperately around. Ammo was falling as far as he could see – it would take precious minutes they didn't have to run from the field of war and it would be like running into a hailstorm of deadly firepower . . .

  And then his eyes fell upon the tank.

  It was about thirty metres away, heavy and imposing; as far as Ben could tell it looked identical to the Chieftain Mark 10 Annie had pointed out yesterday. It was old and spattered in mud, but still looked awesome and threatening, the barrel of its enormous gun pointing belligerently out at a forty-five-degree angle. Maybe they could get some protection inside there, Ben thought to himself; who knows, it might even be operational.

  Annie was looking at him, and seemed to know what he was thinking. 'Let's go for it!' she shouted. They each grabbed one of Joseph's arms and hustled him in the direction of the huge armoured vehicle. They were only metres away from the hut when a burst of shells fell directly on top of it, and the whole thing exploded, sending huge, ugly splinters of wood flying that missed them only by a miracle.

  They ran even faster towards the tank.

  'What are our chances of surviving a direct hit?' Ben yelled at Annie, his voice hoarse from trying to make himself heard above the sound of the planes.

  'Not good,' she replied, 'with or without the tank. But at least we'll be protected from shrapnel and flying debris if we get inside.'

  'OK. How do we get in?'

  'Up the top.'

  Annie clambered onto the khaki chassis of the tank while Ben helped Joseph up the side before climbing up himself. His cousin lifted a metal disc hinged onto the turret, and the three of them dropped inside the tank, then closed the top behind them.

  The interior of the Chieftain was like nothing Ben had ever seen – a metallic, industrial mess of displays, pedals and levers, wires and buttons. It was dingy – the only light coming through a small peephole in front of him that gave a limited amount of vision. A worn-out padded seat with holes in it was situated in the middle of the tank, in front of the controls, and Ben took his place there. As soon as he sat down, there was a massive explosion nearby: the whole tank seemed to shudder, and the three of them were knocked roughly against the metal walls. Annie cried out in pain, and Ben moved
to see that she was OK; Joseph was already there, however; his eyes were suddenly alert again as he held her firm to stop her hurting herself as a result of a second explosion that rocked the tank once more.

  'We're no safer in here than we were out there,' Joseph said. 'We need to get away.'

  'Too right,' Ben said grimly. He looked at the jumble of mechanical equipment in front of him. They meant nothing.

  'There should be a starter button somewhere,' Annie said through clenched teeth.

  Ben scoured the controls. Sure enough there was a large, brown button in front of him. He shrugged, took a deep breath, and hit it.

  To Ben's total surprise, the noisy engine coughed and spluttered into life. Outside, there was another deafening explosion.

  'Drive it!' Annie screamed. 'Get us out of here!'

  'I don't know how!'

  'The pedals,' she yelled at him. 'One's an accelerator, one's a brake. Steer left and right using those red levers on either side.'

  Ben located everything she was talking about. Sure enough, on each side of his seat there was a lever, not unlike the handbrake of a car. He gripped them firmly, peered through the viewing window, and gingerly pressed his foot down on the accelerator. The Chieftain shuddered into movement.

  'Faster, Ben. We've got to get out of here.'

  Ben pressed harder and the tank accelerated. Just then, however, there was an explosion in front of them. Rubble sprayed everywhere, blocking Ben's vision, and he instinctively pulled hard on the right-hand lever. The tank swerved sharply; Ben released the lever to straighten up, but saw himself driving directly towards a hut. He swerved again, missing the building by a whisker. His heart was in his throat as he straightened up once more. In the distance he could see the forest, so he gritted his teeth and pressed the accelerator down full throttle. The tank sped away from the training field and the sound of the bombs grew marginally fainter.

  'That,' Annie shouted, 'was a close shave!'

  'I think we're clear,' Ben started to say, but before he could finish, something caught his eye. A small box nestled in among the controls in front of him started flashing red. There were words, and he squinted his eyes to read them.